Summary:

Cynthia Hiskes joins Dr. Jim on the HR Impact show to discuss the cardinal sin of talent strategy transformation: thinking that all problems are rooted in talent attraction and recruitment. Cynthia emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to talent strategy, focusing on the entire employee lifecycle and engagement. She shares her experience in developing a talent analytics function at Oak Street and how it helped identify and address retention challenges. Cynthia also highlights the need for cross-functional partnership and alignment to drive high performance teams. She concludes by emphasizing the value of understanding the business and using data to inform decision-making.

Key Takeaways:

Talent attraction and recruitment are not the sole contributors to organizational challenges; a holistic approach to talent strategy is necessary.

Engagement survey results can help identify areas of improvement and predict future attrition.

Root cause problem solving is essential in addressing people-related challenges.

Quick wins and alignment with key stakeholders are crucial for building credibility and driving progress.

Understanding the business and using data to inform decision-making are key to creating value through HR.

Chapters:

0:03:05 Using analytical skills in people leadership

0:08:42 Applying lessons from navigating the pandemic to solve talent shortages

0:12:27 Lack of data understanding and cross-functional partnership in HR

0:17:07 Methodical approach enables pace and progress

0:21:19 Prioritize based on business model and economics

0:24:28 Four questions every leader should ask when making decisions.

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Cynthia Hiskes: linkedin.com/in/cynthia-hiskes-9465a24

Music Credit: winning elevation - Hot_Dope



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Dr. Jim x Cynthia Hiskes Master

This is your friendly neighborhood, talent strategy, nerd, Dr. Jim, the Cardinal sin of any talent strategy transformation is thinking that all of your problems are rooted in. Talent traction and recruitment What are the things that people leaders need to do to avoid falling into that trap? That's the question that Cynthia Hiscus, Chief People Officer ATTEND, is going to help us answer today.

So let me give you a little background on Cynthia. She brings over 30 years of experience in multi site Fortune 500 and growth organizations in the CPG technology and healthcare sectors. She's had a Couple of instances where she's actually shepherded organizations into IPO status, one in Ecom, another one in healthcare.

Cynthia Hiskes: Thank you so much. It's nice to spend some time with y'all today.

Dr. Jim: I'm looking forward to this conversation and especially since you're a former Chicago and like myself, we might have some interesting conversations to have along those lines as well, but I think one of the things that I want to begin this conversation with. Is filling in some of the blanks about your background.

That's going to add context to the conversation that we're going to have. So fill the listeners in on some of the things that you feel are important that I left out.

Dr. Jim: That's interesting that your background was originally in engineering and then you made the transition into the HR space. I guess one of the things that I'm curious about. And especially when you apply your leadership lens, how do you advise people to not over [00:03:00] index one way or another on the soft skills or on the analytical skills when it comes to people, leadership and development?

Cynthia Hiskes: Probably the learning from an engineering background is the root cause problem solving. And that's probably one of the best things that I think he approaches. And I use this in leadership coaching as well. Things that you can ask yourself when you're interacting with someone just as if you're approaching a math problem is what's the presenting problem?

What am I trying to solve? And then ask a number of questions to get down to the root cause of the reason why. So usually with people related Mhm. Interactions especially if they're emotionally charged, the first thing that come out of someone's mouth is not going to be what the root cause is.

It's what's bothering them right then. So usually it is slowing things down, asking a bunch of questions to understand what the problem is, where they're coming from. What does help look like? Because sometimes it's actually not help. It's just listening. And then if it is help understanding if someone has the skills to do what it is they need to do in order to address the problem.

Dr. Jim: Oftentimes if you're a first time manager, the instinct is to go ahead and rush in and try to help. So if you give yourself pause and you're asking yourself what should I do in this moment?

Asking the question what's the problem you're trying to solve what does help look like is going to be really powerful in helping you get out of the trap of rushing in to play hero because what you want to do is make sure your people are playing the role of hero, not you, if you want to build a great team.

When you think about you're relatively new attend, so you might want to apply this to your time at Oak street as well. When you think about the accomplishment or accomplishments that you're most proud of. What stands out in the, in your most recent roles?

And to be able to. Influence the leadership and the team to embrace what that what value that kind of team can provide. I think that was an accomplishment, but then to actually be able to see that value translate into results. stArting from doing the analytics on the recruitment, why people come, why people leave and on turnover is, of course, the why people leave and then starting to.

Triangulate that and compare it to our engagement results. So engagement, turnover and recruitment, looking at those three data points and aggregate to be able to help understand and predict where you're going to see maybe future attrition is really helpful.

Dr. Jim: You hit the retention and turnover nerd nerve of mine. So I'm going to sit on this and just pull the thread a little bit. So when you're looking at the relationship among talent attraction why people join, why people leave, and also on retention you applied employee engagement to it.

Cynthia Hiskes: Your engagement results are a predictor of your turnover results. So if you can start looking at those results and seeing where you have hotspots, then that's where we focus time on retention plans within specific teams or specific functions. And so then you go look at the specific engagement.

Survey results for that particular area. Both the free comments and the survey results to better understand what's actually happening there. I think a lot of times what happens with a lot of problem solving is we try to do broad brush problem solving and then what happens is we really aren't solving anybody's problem.

Dr. Jim: You just started attend not too long ago. I'm sure you have a long list of things that are, on your radar as far as what you want to get done, but if you think about your biggest moonshot, what is the biggest moonshot accomplishment that you want to check off the box a year from now?

Cynthia Hiskes: this may not feel like a moon shot to anyone else. But if you understand the dental, especially the high hygiene hygienist space, my biggest moon shot is to have no openings for dental hygienist and any of our studios. And the reason being is. Because that is one of our big limiters to growth and profitability.

Those hygienists and their demographics so that we can create the right product market fit for them. So they want to be with us which is actually the longer term learning that we can then take and reapply to other cohorts as well.

Dr. Jim: I don't know the space really well. So this question might be completely irrelevant, but you're talking about two healthcare spaces. So tend is in healthcare dentistry. And then you were at Oak street you were there through the pandemic. Are there any lessons that you learned navigating through the pandemic that you're applying at tend, which will help solve the Dental hygienist shortage problem that you're trying to solve?

We had a really hard time finding the number of people that we needed to do that and challenge the operation. What if we let people work at home, work from home and monitor their progress and their performance? Through really easy ways in customer service. So we made that shift and we were able to fill our spots.

What we did is we understood what the pain point was for those individuals. And we adjusted our approach and our process to be able to address that pain point. And then we were, Then we were able to fill our spots. Similar process here at Tend. We've taken quite a bit of time to understand the wants, needs and demographics of our hygienists, both our candidates and our current hygienists, so that we can start to break those out into what we have called them as personas, so different personas, and then address the specific pain points of each of those personas so that we're offering a product, so to say, an employment opportunity that meets the needs of these individuals.

And if you're not there's going to be problems and whatnot. So taking that people centered approach this is actually a really great example of how your policy or your process going forward should be informed by what's happening at the dust level versus whatever you decide is convenient for your own personal Biases or likes, dislikes, whatnot.

Given that you're a leadership coach to when you think about all of the leadership. Or HR myths that are out there. What's the one that you wish would just go away?

Not problem, but challenge and journey. Because I think if you can get really clear on who you are as a company. Represent that through your employee brand and then make sure that your internal systems and processes and policies, as we were just talking about, are consistent and provide that are consistent with who you say you are that will not only attract, but then retain people.

And I think that is where need to focus so many times I've come into an organization and they're like, we really have a recruiting problem. And and then you get there and you find out we really don't have a recruiting problem. We really have a retention problem and then that's causing, this causing the recruiting flywheel and those things are all connected.

And I think that's 1 of the 1 of the key values in talent analytics that you can start to apply is you get smarter. And so your attraction process can get better. And then therefore your retention is positively impacted as well.

Why is it so easy for some executives, or a lot of executives, to fall into that sort of thinking? Why aren't they looking at other elements that are equally, if not more, relevant when you're looking at the employee life cycle?

Cynthia Hiskes: Maybe it's because people aren't bringing forth the data in a way that helps them understand where the problem is. I think that's 1 thing. The other is sometimes the cross functional muscle is overpowered. On the non HR side of things.

So what I mean by that is, I think cross functional partnership, not just collaboration, but really partnership on solving some of these problems is where some of these challenges is really the opportunity that. Companies, especially as they are growing and scaling face. So what I mean by that, we say it's a recruiting problem.

Has different requirements than the same hiring a different hiring manager for the same role. Yeah, it's like this lack of consistency. And then I think what happens is it all gets pushed back to recruiting when really you'd have to build some of these cross functional processes and communication that helps you.

Partner to that achievement. And that's some of what we're, we've been able to push through and drive, but it's not easy.

Dr. Jim: If I'm looking at the other side of the table and wondering why is it so easy to. Look at everything through the lens of a talent attraction problem or a recruitment issue when you look at the broader research and data that exists in terms of why people exit.

And as far as what they've been told, but they never hear, have that conversation about what's next for me. So they get disengaged and leave. So that again. Is a problem that sits at the feet of whoever the line manager is. And unfortunately, a lot of people don't want to be accountable for that. So it's just easier to push it off to a different function.

Cynthia Hiskes: And that's where I think onboarding and ongoing training and development are huge cross functional relationships that need to be built in order to be effective. And, yes, I've seen it go back and forth, who owns this? It's a people thing. So HR owns it. But there's specific skills.

Dr. Jim: So when we take account of this little bit of conversation that we just had, how does that tie into some of the realizations that you had that changed the game in terms of how you build high performing teams,

Cynthia Hiskes: I think that probably is. Kind of points to my approach, the things that I look at and spend time on and prioritize within an organization. So coming into 10, we had been doing engagement surveys, but we hadn't been sharing the results and certainly weren't building action plans and sharing with the teams what we're doing about these.

And part of the reason people don't do that is it's not a whole lot of fun. if You've ever read an engagement survey result before, you feel like crap when you're done reading it because no one's happy. And then you don't feel like anything that you're going to do is going to be helpful.

So it's transparent, it starts to be reliable. And what you're ultimately doing is building trust because you're not going to be able to fix everything. And people actually know that. But what they really appreciate is that you're listening to them and that you're trying and that you're making some kind of progress.

And I think that is the kind of relationship that you want to have built in an organization because that will flow into things beyond just that particular topic. That's how you want people to walk around and live their day to day work life.

Cynthia Hiskes: Being methodical is what allows you to maintain pace and progress. It is the methodical pieces, the analysis and the planning, and then it's execution. If you just focus on execution, if you're just focusing on the doing the doing, you never then that's when you really, I think that's when you're on the hamster wheel, because you're really not, you're really not knocking anything down.

You're just continuing to spin plates. I Think it allows you to, you get clear on your priorities. So then if I know these are the three things that I'm working against when distractions come or things come to compete with those, it's very easy. It's much easier for me to decide yes or no, or to understand the impact of changing the path.

Dr. Jim: I like how you tied that together because whenever you're in a training environment or at least working on any sort of initiative that you want to go from point A to point B, one of the key steps is identifying what are the fundamental pieces that help you move towards that desired end state and you focus on excellence on those fundamental pieces.

So it's slow down to speed up by having focus on those basics. Thanks. Because that's, what's going to get you most of the way there. The other part that I like about what you said, is that when the situation changes or you have new priorities that come up, it ties back to what we were talking about earlier, asking the question, what's the problem that you're trying to Because if you have that clear. And you've communicated that across the organization and you've been transparent about what the move forward is.

Cynthia Hiskes: Analysis paralysis is probably 1 of them. Although, I focus on know your results and understand data and use data to help you problem solve. You can't hide behind it and don't let it in and of itself slow you down. It should be an enabler, not an inhibitor. So I think that's really important to understand.

I think those two things are really important. And lastly, I would say alignment. Oh yeah. We talked a little bit earlier about silos and busting silos. It's really important that you aren't building and this great high performance team in a bubble you need to build alignment with your key stakeholders in the organization, help them understand what you're doing, help them understand the data, share information with them, ask them for input and then make sure that you're circling back and keeping, keeping them Up to speed on the progress that you're making and really bringing them along. They need to be brought along in the process.

Cynthia Hiskes: Sometimes you have to not do the most important thing in order to get the quick win, because sometimes the most important thing is getting the quick win. But but that's fine, which is good, but that's a strategy and that's important to have. It helps you build like relationship and credibility.

What I think is really important is understanding the business model and the economics of it. And that's what you use to help you understand what's the most important thing that I could be spending time on. And don't just think about that yourself and go back to your office and do the work.

And oh, by the way, if it's connecting to delivering the business results, it is probably the most important thing for you to be doing.

Dr. Jim: So that's really good. And it immediately got me to thinking like, if I want to identify what the weakest idea is, I'll float one as something that I'm thinking about, and then ask, why is this a terrible idea? And people are more likely to tell you something is a terrible idea than they're going to be able to tell you something is great.

So play into that, pick something that you think is a potential and say, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. Why is this a bad idea? And everybody will volunteer why that idea is crap. And if you don't have too many naysayers, that might tell you that you're onto something. When you think about. Everything that we've talked about and you want to crystallize that into a few key principles that the listeners should keep in mind when they're when they start this journey, what are the things that stand out ?

Financial metrics, the overall balanced scorecard metrics that you have understand those and how the people function relates and then where you can best contribute, maybe what you think is the biggest gap isn't necessarily where you can best contribute to the overall business results. And you need to be sensitive to that because that's ultimately what will.

Build credibility and help you drive in the long term. And then you need to come to the table with data and information to share that and pose that to the rest of the stakeholders, because it may not be familiar to them and then you bring them along the journey. So continue to provide, here's what I'm sharing.

Here's why I'm sharing it. I'm proposing we do this because this is the impact that it has. And on a regular basis, come back and report out on results,

Dr. Jim: Great stuff. So if folks want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Cynthia Hiskes: probably on LinkedIn.

I think that's absolutely critical for anybody that's listening to get in the habit of asking. But then after that, when you're working on your prioritization, why this? Why now? Why care if you're asking those four questions that should point a pretty clear road map on what you should be focusing on when you're trying to execute the any sort of transformational change, but the other piece to think about is that when you're in the process of executing a transformation, you're going to have a lot of things on your radar, and I think the biggest thing that comes out of this conversation that stood out to me Is instead of trying to boil the ocean and pick all the things that could be wrong, identify the one or [00:25:00] two that's going to get you the quickest wins and start there and then build from that . For those of you who have been listening to the conversation, let us know what you thought of it. Leave us a review. Tune in next time, where we'll have another leader joining us and telling us their game changing realizations would help them build a high performing team,